Part horror story, part love story, part academic paper, part erringly powerful rambling, part insanity, part unfathomable footnote labyrinth, part meta novel – and abundantly mysterious and magnificent, House of Leaves is one of the most thought provoking and spine-chilling books I’ve ever had the fortune to read.
House of Leaves is a thoroughly weird and unique attraction: bizarre layout; double narrative; streams of consciousness; unbelievable depth; interesting and complicated typography; codes; extensive footnotes, lots and lots of footnotes, footnotes that have footnotes, and then footnotes that have footnotes that have footnotes. It is very clever, and scary, in an eerie, calculated way; there are pages where there are only a few words on each page, slowly cranking up the tension, in a way that a good horror story should.
Perhaps the most memorable feature of House of Leaves, is that of the typography. The text is arranged on the pages in such a way that the method of reading the words often mimics the situations or feelings of the characters. At times the words are upside down, or position to be read up the page when the character is climbing a ladder, text that grows and shrinks in size mimicking the characters travel through different sized tunnels. The text is flipped upside-down when the character becomes disorientated, this creates an interesting situation for the reader when they are trying to read House of Leaves in a public location.
The core discourse is that of a house which changes and grows on the inside but remains unchanged on the outside. The seemingly alive house grows, shrinks, consumes, horrifies and psychologically devours its residents. The house's occupant, Navidson, makes a documentary about the house called The Navidson Record, this provides one of the main narratives of the book. The thrust of the narrative is a drawn out essay by the now-deceased viewer of Navidsons record, Zampanò. This essay, and narrative, is further edited and commentated on by its finder, Johnny Truant, who is seemingly attempting to piece together the stories of both Navidson and Zampano. However his editing also produces a third major narrative: that of the complex life and the deterioration Truant very messed up psyche. All of which is told in the footnotes.
The Navidson record provides a solid and interesting Narrative, exploring without subtlety but with a great deal of complexity, the characters and their relationships.
Danielewski does a noteworthy job in contrasting the careful academic writing of Zampano with the nonsensical, rambling of Truant. Truant, on multiple occasions admits to be dishonest and simply making stuff up. This makes him a much needed and light-hearted remedy to the formal academic lexis of his counterpart, Zampano. Nevertheless, the drug induced narrative of a compulsive liar is always destined to be an incoherent mess, bordering on annoyance. Whilst this adds powerful character development, its deviation and incoherence makes it unbelievably hard to read.
As a student, perhaps the most fearsome, horrific and unnerving inclusion, was that of footnotes. Aside from annihilating the last remaining segments of my psyche where self-belief – in regards to referencing – was still prevalent, it has the uncanny ability to make one question their own reality; faux-quotes from faux-interviews entwined with real quotes from real interviews (as is the life of a student).
House of Leaves is weird, and I mean David Lynch type of weird. The more one unravels the various narratives concealed throughout the novel, the more one can’t help but feel like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole yet somehow landing up in Twin Peaks; a Dali designed house of horrors ride, a nonsensical environment with an unsettling tone.
For all the discussion regarding the unconventional nature of this book, one can be excused for feeling that the main theme is being overlooked. The typography, various codes within the book, colouring of certain words, the intentionally incorrect index, the unusual elements of House of Leaves indisputably effects the story. However, whilst this may sound like a criticism, it isn’t a simple matter of ‘narrative vs. story?’ as the story could easily stand alone in its genre as a fine piece of literature. It will frighten you, corner you, and loiter in your mind without gimmicks or narrative tricks.
The underlying story is strong enough, that if House of Leaves had been written as a conventional novel it would've still done very well. It is both strange and superb. This book is unlike any other that I have ever read, it is also the most time consuming book I have ever read. The longer I read the further my mind became lost within the house, and perhaps most interestingly, the longer I read, the more I wanted to become lost, even though I was scared of its creepily addictive power; the sign of a successful novel.
No amount of simile or metaphor can give justice to the sheer depth of this book. Not only is the core plot an exciting one, Danielewski’s novel structurally mirrors the labyrinth of the house. Whilst the subsequent exploration is genuinely thrilling. the challenge it creates would even trouble Theseus, when you finally complete this book, you will most likely be as lost as those live in The House of Leaves.
By Andrew Sperrin
Good work, Andrew: although it leaves the reader rather at sea until the fourth paragraph as to what the novel is even notionally about -- which gives the piled-up clauses of generalised description and hyperbole and slightly bewildering feel. I appreciate you are discussing a slightly unconventional novel, but still. I'd have liked to have seen a little more specific engagement with the text -- perhaps quoting passages and discussing them; however entertaining your similes and metaphors are!
ReplyDelete"For all the discussion regarding the unconventional nature of this book..." What discussion? You haven't cited any.
"It will frighten you, corner you, and loiter in your mind without gimmicks or narrative tricks." Do you mean it would still linger in the mind, even if it hadn't been written with narrative tricks?